Speed chart Repair or Reproduction?

[wally318]

Hi All.
I've got a speed chart off the horiz. spindle on a Rockwell mill.
As you can see from the pic its quite faded. Looks worse in person.
Is it possible to restore this? or alternatively whats the easiest
way to make a new one without breaking the bank?

[Lazz]

Seeing yours mine isnt so bad...

[rrnut-2]

email Keith Rucker at VintageMachinery.org. He knows of a person that will make replacement plates for machinery. He has had a few made by this individual.

Jim B

[Bill Shields]

Amen on that...hot one for an old SBL from them long ago

[rmac]

There are several options, depending on how closely you want to reproduce the original.

1. Talk to Mr. Rucker, as suggested above.
2. Check out some of the online shops that make custom signs. It looks like you can get a small one made on 0.040" thick aluminum from artwork you supply for somewhere around $20.
3. Look for someone local who does sublimation printing on aluminum. (That's probably the same thing the online guys are doing.) Again, you'd need to supply your own artwork.
4. Check out the process shown in this video . I gave it a quick go just now using an aluminum sheet instead of glass like in the video, with pretty good results on the first attempt. (Picture below.) The "Black on White" part actually looks quite good in person. The "White on Black" not so much because it's more obvious that the black part isn't completely black. I can imagine that fooling around with the printer settings and/or paper might help.
5. There's some stuff called Mod Podge Photo Transfer Medium that's supposed to work for transferring images to metal. I have no idea if it's any good.
6. One of the comments to the video mentioned above describes yet another process that might be fun to try:

   In body shop in collage, we took photos and layered polyurethane over them and pealed it off when it dried. We would put them motorcycle gas tanks or car hoods helmets or whatever and sprayed a clear coat so the seam would melt in. Any high-quality print would work, even magazine pictures.

   Again, I have no idea how well this works.

-- Russell Mac

[jcfx]

The cheapest way I can think of is scan the plate retouch in a photo editing program or create a new art for
for it in a vector illustration program, print it out on paper and have it laminated, double stick it over the old plate.

There is also etching the a plate and fill in the etched areas with paint, it's pretty low tech but works
if you want to do a deep dive DIY, I've done it many times for work projects with aluminum and brass.

The sublimation process is interesting, I have info plates on my Maximat lathes that seem to defy any solvents
I wonder if that's how they're made, I do know some plates are anodized, found that out when I was cleaning
my lab jack with a lye based degreaser, it started to take the color off the lable. Did some anodizing experiments
but the issue was my substitute anodizing solution and the mask resistance to the anodozing solution.
I'll revisit it some day.